From rotting teeth and expanding waistlines to crankiness and
diabetes, sugar is the culprit behind much of what ails us. The average
American consumes 39 teaspoons of the stuff a day—a recipe for a
public health disaster.
Yet, perhaps counterintuitively, sugar is now being hailed as a
healing substance at the forefront of a revolutionary science called
glyconutrition. Before you start popping M&Ms as if they were miracle
pills, be warned that it's not that kind of sugar that holds
medicinal powers. There's sugar and there are sugars.
Over 200 sugar compounds, technically known as saccharides, occur
naturally in plants. And eight of them have been identified as essential
to optimal human health.
Two of those, saccharides galactose and glucose, are commonly found
in the foods we eat. Galactose is a milk sugar and glucose is the sugar
that sits on your table; it's also a component of fruits and
grains.
Both galactose and glucose are broken down in the body and used as
fuel. While the body can use other nutrients as fuel, namely fat, the
brain relies almost exclusively on glucose to power its intense metabolic
activity.
The other six essential sugars were for the major portion of human
history part of the everyday diet, as our ancestors dined on whatever
plants they could find. Ninety-nine percent of the diet homosapiens
evolved on was made up of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds and
legumes.
Today, however, the variety of sugars is largely absent from our
table, thanks to our reliance on processed foods made with refined
sugar—a substance that sweetens our tea and coffee and lurks in
sodas, fruit juices, bread and cakes. The problem is not only that it has
displaced other essential sugars but that it has been stripped of its
plant source and, with it, its nutritional value.
Meanwhile, the body requires the sugars missing from our diet for
some very strategic uses—such as, to coat nearly every cell in the
body. "They are like a Swiss army knife which the body can use for
different tasks," says Emil Mondoa, M.D., pediatrician and coauthor
with Mindy Kitei of Sugars That Heal.
These sugars are not converted one to the other in the body. Once
ingested, they combine with proteins and fats to create compounds that
allow cells to communicate with each other. And no cells communicate more
with each other than brain cells.
Glycoproteins, for example, make up the receptors that
neurotransmitters such as serotonin bind to on nerve-cell surfaces. So
they are critical to every thought and feeling that you have.
Glyconutrients also play key roles in stressed states.
Overactivation of the stress response is thought to be the primary
mechanism of depression. The receptor for corticotropin releasing factor,
a key activator of the body-wide stress response, is a glycoprotein.
Dysfunction of the receptor is considered by many to be the core defect
in depression and anxiety disorders.
Galactose specifically contributes to the makeup of galactolipids,
basic components of nerve cell membranes. They too influence the fluidity
of the membrane and facilitate all cell transactions.
On the frontiers of medicine, researchers are testing therapeutic
applications of various glyconutrients missing from our everyday diet.
Preliminary clinical trials have shown that supplementation with
glyconutrients may enhance memory, support a variety of higher brain
functions, and help curb the stress response.
They also reduce allergies and allay symptoms of arthritis,
diabetes, lupus and kidney disease (in animals). Several labs and are
looking into ways to use sugar compounds to improve the medicines used to
fight anemia, HIV and cancer.
Natural sources of glyconutrients exist all around us. You might
not know it because nutritional sugars are not necessarily sweet; most
are tasteless. Mannose is one of the eight essential saccharides and
it's found in cabbage, broccoli, and seeds. It's thought to
be important in the structure of nerve cells.
Fucose, another glyconutrient, is thought to be particularly active
at the synaptic junctions between nerve cells. It's found in
mushrooms and in seeds. Xylose, yet another, is present in yeast, rye and
barley.
Until we better understand how to heal ourselves with what we
choose to eat, these so-called "sweet medicines" can be found
in powdery nutritional supplements, derived from plant substances. But
your best bet, as always, is to eat a variety of unprocessed
foods.
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